Decades ago recognizing that the institutionalisation of the mentally ill was cruel,unjust and counter productive, we started closing these facilities and embarked on a policy of community care.Well it appears that we have come full circle.
The numbers are sobering, from the annual report of the Office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada, the number of mentally ill offenders in the federal prison system has more than doubled in the past decade, with approximately 36% of male prisoners and more than 50% of female inmates showing some form of mental health issues.
Because of their illness, prisoners with mental disorders are more likely to run afoul of prison rules, which often leads to institutional charges and long periods in segregation. Segregation is particularly harmful to those dealing with mental health issues as Howard Sapers, the Correctional Investigator of Canada.states in his report.
In the past year, I have been very clear on the point that mentally disordered offenders should not be held in segregation or in conditions approaching solitary confinement. Segregation is not therapeutic. In too many cases, segregation worsens underlying mental health issues. Solitary confinement places inmates alone in a cell for 23 hours a day with little sensory or mental stimulation, sometimes for months at a time. Deprived of meaningful social contact and interaction with others, the prisoner in solitary confinement may withdraw, «act out» or regress. Research suggests that between one-third and as many as 90% of prisoners experience some adverse symptoms in solitary confinement, including insomnia, confusion, feelings of hopelessness and despair, hallucinations, distorted perceptions and psychosis.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee has said that the practice may, in some instances, be a violation of international law, amounting to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
The use of prolonged segregation for managing prisoners can rarely be justified. There is growing international recognition and expert consensus that the use of solitary confinement should be prohibited for mentally ill prisoners and that it should never be used as a substitute for appropriate mental health care.
“We are primates, we are made to socialize, but in segregation you have no contacts, you can’t speak to anyone. My friend died three months ago, he hung himself in the hole. Now I am in the hole. Sometimes you look at what you got and take it from there. If all you have is boredom, sometimes just getting excited and creating commotions (see Ashley Smith) is better than nothing. I am starting to crack… I am so bored and so cut off from interaction I can’t take it anymore. I can’t even see another man’s eyes when I speak to him, can you imagine what that feels like?”
(A segregated maximum security offender in his own words, November 2009.)
I seems clear to me that we don’t need to build more prisons, instead what we need to do is invest in mental health in a very significant way. Do this and not only will we be doing the right and proper thing but at the same time freeing up space in our prisons eliminating the need for more prisons even as Harper and his gang ramp up the already too high rate of incarceration in this country.Would this not be a better use of our tax dollars?